Square Updates Its Register iPad App With Kitchen Tickets, Ordering Features To Better Serve Restaurants
Square's point-of-sale technology and iPad-powered register, Square Register is getting a big update today targeted at better serving restaurants. New features in the release include …
Context & Ripple Effects
Square introduced Register as an iPad app for merchants in 2012, pairing payment acceptance with analytics and reporting its early Register and analytics launch. The restaurant-focused update extends that same register into the ordering and kitchen workflow.
Square had also packaged Register hardware for brick-and-mortar businesses in February 2013. Adding kitchen tickets and ordering gives that in-store setup a clearer use case for restaurants rather than positioning it only as a payment counter.
First-order effects
- Restaurants using Square Register can send kitchen tickets and handle ordering within the iPad point-of-sale app, reducing the need to separate those tasks from checkout.
- Square broadens Register's addressable merchant workflow from payments and analytics to restaurant service operations.
Second-order effects
- Square's restaurant pitch becomes more dependent on the full Register setup—app, iPad and in-store hardware—rather than on a card reader alone.
- Merchants evaluating Square Register can weigh a single ordering-and-payment workflow against assembling separate restaurant ordering and payment tools.
Third-order effects
- If Square continues adding business-specific workflows, point-of-sale competition shifts from payment processing features toward ownership of a merchant's daily operating system.
- Restaurant software becomes a strategic distribution point for payments: the provider embedded in orders and kitchen flow has a stronger position at checkout.
The trend: Square is moving from a payment-acceptance product toward vertical point-of-sale software that embeds payments in merchants' everyday operations.